sough, analysis of chiles sightinings (montgomery, 22 july 1948)

7/28/2019 Sough, Analysis of Chiles Sightinings (Montgomery, 22 July 1948)

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Analysis of the CHILES-WHITTED Sightings, July 24 1948

Martin Shough

SUMMARY

There is nothing in this case that convincingly rules out a fragmenting fireball, and the "airshipeffect" which causes the eye to see a line of glowing fragments as lighted windows in an

elongated machine has been a widely known feature of such sightings at least since Hartmannmade a pretty good study of it in the Condon Report. Other observers in neighbouring states

saw on their far western horizon an "unusually bright meteor" that could have been the samefireball on a near-horizontal trajectory heading SW over the Alabama-Georgia border area.Chiles-Whitted saw it only for a few seconds going by above and to their right heading SW on anear reciprocal heading to them but miles higher and much faster then they thought. As itapproached them, the angular rate of the object would rise geometrically in a hockey-stickcurve which, interpreted in terms of an illusory near-miss with another "aircraft", couldsuggest the appearance of a climb and an avoiding veer. According to most SIGN sources theapparent climb was said by the pilots to be relatively small, "gentle" or a "tendency",

apparently only a few hundred feet, not the dramatic "fast vertical" evasion described yearslater and in some newspapers. Newspaper stories of turbulent prop-wash or jet-wash were also

repudiated by Chiles and Whitted in their official statements. Also the sighting was not under asolid cloud deck as sometimes reported. The night was "bright moonlit" and "clear" withexcellent visibility and only "light, broken" clouds (4/10 according to AF weather report), andthe only passenger witness, McKelvie, was watching the "clearly visible" moonlit landscape onthe right of the plane at the time, consistent with the requirement of plenty of clear sky and/orthin cloud through which the fireball might have been seen (other observers to the East - inthe sighting direction - were reporting clear skies and no cloud). There were two possiblemeteor shower radiants in the right part of the NE sky: the Beta Taurids and especially the

Perseids (although it is true that exceptional fireballs are not necessarily associated withshowers).

THE CLIMB

Some newspaper stories, and a late description of a "fast vertical ascent" given by Whitted toMcDonald in 1968, have fostered the impression that this climb was too violent to have beenan illusion. The Atlanta Constitution, July 25 1948

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describes how the object "pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear and

zoomed up into the clouds".

McDonald's account too has been very influential:

But both agreed, then and in my 1968 interview, that the object was some kind of

vehicle . . . . Both saw it pass aft of them and do an abrupt pull-up; but only Whitted,on the right side, saw the terminal phase in which the object disappeared after a shortbut fast vertical ascent. By "disappeared", Whitted made clear to me that he meant justthat; earlier interrogations evidently construed this to mean "disappeared aloft" or intothe broken cloud deck that lay above them. Whitted said that was not so; the objectvanished instantaneously after its sharp pull-up. . . . A horizontally-moving fireball

under a cloud-deck, at 5000 ft., exhibiting two rows of lights construed by experiencedpilots as ports, and finally executing a most non-ballistic 90-degree sharp pull-up, is a

strange fireball indeed.

Most SIGN documents are inconsistent with these impressions of a sharp 90-degree pull-upands vertical ascent, including Chiles' and Whitted's official signed statements, which refer tothe climb only vaguely and not at all, respectively.
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LOCATIONS, TIMES AND REPORTED OBJECT HEADINGS

The phrase "pulled up sharply" does occur in one SIGN summary of the case and we can tracethis to the Incident #144 CHECKLIST

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where it is referenced originally to the 'Atlanta Constitution July 25 1948' (see above).

The earliest SIGN source I've found is in the form of a handwritten and only partly intelligiblemass of notes on a sheet of paper bearing an Atlanta hotel letterhead and what appears to bethe name "Loedding" with the date "7/26/48". Presumably this sheet is Alfred Loedding's notesof his interview with C and/or W, written the day after the Atlanta newspaper story appeared.


Here Loedding writes "climbed sharply to higher level approx 5 seconds in level flight" and the

word "sharply" is annotated with: "pulled up, indicated [illegible, possibly considerable]acceleration (g's)", which is at odds with the impression in other SIGN docs that the apparent

climb was "gentle" and is closer the newspaper stories. But the attribution on the CHECKLISTsuggests that this information was drawn from the Atlanta Constitution article, which could

well fit because this had been published the day before Loedding's interview in Atlanta.

It has been suggested that the apparent climb was an illusion caused by the DC-3's own

evasive motion, but as Don Ledger points out (currentencounters list post 12.02.11) this doesnot really make sense in terms of instinctive pilotage, when the control inputs would be

balanced to maintain altitude in a left bank. If anything the wing coming up would encouragean impression of a descent relative to the a/c reference frame, and experienced pilots would

not likely be deceived by this well-understood effect. And illusions due to relative latitudinal

motions are probably unnecessary anyway. If they saw a fireball the climb can probably beexplained by how the eye perceives the changing angular relationship of objects converging ontwo essentially antiparallel straight paths when distance and speed are misjudged.
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If the light had been another aircraft in the troposphere, approaching approximately literallyhead-on and possibly co-altitudinal as they thought, then their experience and judgment couldcorrectly interpret the way it appeared to change angular position as it passed over them andpresent to their minds the correct intuitive picture of a familiar plane passing by at a certaindistance and altitude that they could roughly estimate.

But if unknown to them it is really a high-speed fireball much further away and much higher,

then plugging erroneous assumptions into this sort of intuitive calculation will yield a model ofthe object's motion that is incorrect but nevertheless convincing.

In the fireball case, the rapidly increasing, very large angular rate will tend to suggest that the"aircraft" is veering off its assumed head-on course as the brain tries to adjust its assumptionsto the changing angular geometry.

It can be argued that a pilot who knows from long experience what is happening when another

plane passes by would not mistakenly interpret an accelerating angular rate of climb for a realclimb. But the point seems to be that if it is a really a meteor, and if you think it is some typeof nearby aircraft ten times closer and a hundred times slower, then you don'tknow what ishappening, you only thinkyou know what is happening. What you expect to happen, if you

think that you are seeing some type of aircraft converging with you on a reciprocal heading, isthat it will go over the top of you at a constant and fairly sedate apparent true speed. Whenthis happens your expectation is confirmed; your mental set based on familiar experience isvalidated. But if it is a fireball then it behaves unexpectedly. Exactly because you do think you

know what is happening (being an expert means being so familiar with your usual workingenvironment that you do expect to understand it) you can interpret what happens using

inappropriate expectations.

If it was a fireball (in the order of) ten times as far away and travelling a hundred times as fast

as they expected, the increase in horizontal andvertical angular rates would be anomalouslyfast in terms of their expectation. One way of the brain making sense of that is to dump the

original expectation and say "OK, it must be hugelyfaster and further away than I thought, so

must be a meteor". The other way is to preserve the original mental set but tweak the details,so you say "I still see some sort of nearby aircraft, but it must be a bitfaster than an aircraftand it must have climbed over me", i.e. a UFO.

THE "JET-WASH"

On the day after the event, July 25 1948, the newspaper Atlanta Constitution carried a veryinfluential story by Albert Riley


which quoted Chiles as describing how the object "pulled up with a tremendous burst of flameout of its rear and zoomed up into the clouds. Its prop-wash or jet-wash rocked our DC-3".

Some other 1948 papers also contain the reference to jet wash. Some don't. It would beinteresting if tedious to map the threads of wire-service stories and simple copycat reportingthrough this mess of reportage to work out the history. Did Chiles (and/or Whitted) give thisstory to mutliple outlets? Or would we find it was a meme that replicated and spread from just

one original news source?

Against this we have the witnesses' signed official statements both denying that they had feltany sort of wash or turbulence.

Chiles: "There was no prop wash or rough air felt as it passed."

Whitted: "We heard no noise nor did we feel any turbulence from the object."


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And Loedding's interview notes dated July 26 1948


say "no noise" and "no disturbance felt regarding any waves or wash".

After his 1968 interviews (House Committee on Science & Astronautics Symposium July 1968pp.42-3) McDonald put the matter very delicately: "There is uncertainty in the record, and intheir respective recollections, as to whether the DC-3 was rocked by something like a wake".This appears to imply that in 1968 one of the men was claiming to recall a wash disturbanceeffect which he had explicitly repudiated in 1948.

The passenger witness, McKelvie, did mention that he felt an unusual amount of vibration, butthis may not be significant. Some ordinary turbulence is not unexpected at 5000 ft.

THE "ROCKET" WITH WINDOWS

The appearance of a fragmenting bolide can be weird. The "airship effect" gives you theflaming cigar with windows. Hartmann's 1968 study of the eyewitness descriptions of Titan 3C-4 Sept 1967 and Zond IV March 1968 re-entries and the Feb 1913 Great Lakes meteor trainor fragmented bolide is instructive - especially the latter because neither UFOs nor rockets

even existed yet. All of them have many examples of the "machine with lines of illuminatedwindows" type, even down to the "double deck" in the 1913 case. Very similar to Chiles-

Whitted:

"The series of lights travelled in unison and so horizontal that I could think only of a giant

flying machine"

"They did not seem to be falling as meteors usually do... our first impression was of a fleet ofilluminated airships"

"a large airplane or dirigible with two tiers of lights strung along the sides"

Chiles and Whitted? No. The disintegrating fireball train that passed 46 miles up over Ontarioon Feb 9 1913.

"wingless airplane-looking vehicle... on fire in front and behind.... many windows"

"fat cigar... square shaped windows"

"solid rocket-type vehicle with three lights"

Chiles and Whitted? No, re-entry of Zond IV March 3 1968.

The C-W event was very short. The duration 5-10 sec could even be a significant overestimate,given the typical "slow-motion" effect of shocking circumstances. A longer figure of 10-15 secis given on the Incident #144 CHECKLIST but where this originally comes from is uncertain.Chiles said in his own signed statement it might have been visible for 10 seconds. Whitted said

5 seconds, but not more than 10 seconds. The earliest file source for the figure of 10-15 sec isthe sheet of handwritten notes dated July 26 made by Loedding after his interview with C-W in

Atlanta. Did C & W think about it and change their minds about this later, as well as reducingthe 10-15 seconds to 5-10? Possibly. But it may even have come from a newspaper story readby Loedding when in Atlanta. It remains an uncomfortable fact that the previous day's 'Atlanta

Constitution' is referenced twice as a source for other data in the Incident #144 CHECKLIST.

And how significant is 5-10 (or even 15) seconds? The Zond IV re-entry I already referred to
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and which was seen as a cigar fuselage with not only windows but even riveted panels (!) wasestimated to pass by in "about half a minute" (travelling an apparent 150 yds only 1 milesouth of the observer). The 1913 Great Lakes fireball train - perceived in the same "airship"terms even then - took much longer. One witness who thought of headlights on an aircraft said"after a minute or a minute and a half I could see it was a meteor."

Massey's description of a cylindrical object over Robins AFB with a "faint phosphorescent glow

on the belly of the object", a "trailing faint blue flame" and a "long stream of fire coming out ofthe tail end" is very similar to C/W's.


He was asked if he was aware of C/W's story before reporting. A comment in Capt. Sneider's

evaluation comments that there was no chance of cross-influence between Massey and C/W. Atthe time of original reporting this may be true. But by the time of this interview Massey

answered a question if he was aware of the C/W sighting, replying that he was, having read itin the papers. So perhaps the possibility of influence by the time of his detailed report cannotbe ruled out as a factor encouraging his impressions.

On the other hand, an early July 24 message from Maxwell Flight Service Centre to HQ MATS


describes Massey already reporting a "squash-shaped object with a flaming exhaust", which -assuming "squash" indicates a basically elongated or ovoid body with one end possibly morepointed - does seem to confirm that Massey reported something similar in shape to C/W fromthe very first, not just in his later interview after he read it in the papers (see below for moreon this message).

Indeed, when asked in his interview about possible "windows" and "decks divided intosections", Massey replied that he wasn't sure: "It would be hard to tell if there were windows,and a divided deck could not be recognised from the ground", which from the UFO point ofview is the right answer considering that he saw it pass "overhead". But if he saw the same

fragmented fireball as C/W, and if the fragments were the "windows", why did Massey notseeany "windows"?

OTHER FIREBALL REPORTS?

It is true that we don't have many reports of possible simultaneous fireball sightings in the

Chiles-Whitted case.

It would be helpful to have some idea of how many witnesses/reports might be expected. The1968 Zond IV re-entry I mentioned had hundreds of witnesses from Kentucky to Pennsylvia.That was at 9:45 PM EST. In the 1967 Titan 3 C-4 re-entry, Hartmann "solicited observations

through a local newspaper" and received a total 15 reports. It was 9:53 PM MDST. In the C/Wcase I count a possible total of only 9 recorded witnesses associated with similar reports along

a rough corridor from Virginia to Alabama, see attached map.

The hour of the night is not favourable, and as Kevin Randle pointed out (currentencounters

list post 12.02.11) the news outlets in 1948 were very limited, compared even to 1968.Neverthess we have only this short list of possibles in the SIGN file:

- civilian on fire watch, Robins AFB, 0145

- pilot near Blackstone, Virginia, 0230- aircrew en route Blackstone-Greenboro North Carolina, 0230- aircrew + passenger near Montgomery, Alabama 0245

- 2 hunters near Covington, Georgia "about 0300"
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(+ sightings by at least seven persons in Augusta, Ga, area, mentioned in the file butapparently confirmed as having happened 2 days later July 26. There was also a flap of reports

in the Pacific NW on the evening of the C/W sighting, but evidently also unrelated)

One approach to these different times is to take them seriously and say they representdifferent points on the track of a real UFO flying over the area. But they don't make a coherent

track at all. They are all over the place (see map). Considered as sightings of nearby objects atlow level in local airspace, none of these trajectories forms a continuous track with another.Yet they are similar reports of a similar fireball-type object travelling in the same direction in a

similar rough time frame.

If there is a connection, what is it? A shower of unusual meteors? Unlikely. If there were

mutliple fireballs of course that would only multiply the expected number of witnesses (andfireballs do not occur in showers and are not especially associated with meteor showers

either).

Capt Sneider's report concludes:

COMMENTS: Analysis of data under Incident #144 reveals that four separate cases areinvolved; one having occurred on 24 July 1948 and the others on the 26 July 1948. Apreponderance of evidence is available to establish that in almost all oases anunidentified object was seen within stated times and dates over an extended area,

pursuing a general Southerly course. Descriptions as to size, shape, color andmovements are fairly consistent.

Sneider's language is as clear as mud but what he meant was this: The Covington report was

in a newspaper cutting and apparently was considered only background info, so we can reduceit to 4 separate official reports on 24 July. Then the Blackstone and Blackstone-Greenbororeports are being collapsed into one "case" (Incident #2). And the Robins and C/W reports arecollapsed into another (Incident #1), so we get down to two "cases" separated by about 500

miles. You could then make it "one case" by assuming a UFO flying at 2000 mph from Virginiato Alabama, but this is not what Sneider was thinking. He was dismissing the eastern pilot

sightings as unrelated sightings of "a very unusual meteor" meteor, the rationale being asfollows:

This sighting is considered separately since the descriptions of speed as "meteoric" and"terrific", the manner of travel described as an arc or horizontal, and the fact that it"faded like a meteor" seem to indicate that the object seen was not the one observed inIncident #1.

See http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=MAXW-PBB4-20

So Sneider says there was only one true unknown, one "case", sighted at two places, whichwas "obviously not a meteor".

But I'm uncomfortable with this method and I suspect the "meteor" seen from Blackstone-Greenboro couldhave been a distant fireball also seen by C/W [and by Massey if the 1-hour

time glitch can be repaired].

Reports from the two other planes

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describe a "meteor brighter than any ever seen before" or what "appeared to be a rocket trail"travelling at apparent altitude but "on the distant western horizon", "20deg above the horizon",

"slightly above the horizon", on a "southwest heading" ( 210/230 deg) and "appeared to be
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travelling horizontally". One plane was on a heading of 215 deg, the other on 240 deg, so theysaw it receeding more or less ahead of them or ahead and to their right. One plane noted thetrail covering 80-90deg of azimuth. The other saw it for 3 seconds, but conceivably because ofthe way they were facing (SW) they could have missed the start of the incandescence and onlynoticed it as the meteor tracked SW into their forward field of view.

Say the Blackstone-Greenboro area planes are at 5000ft (probably less in the one case where

he'd just taken off) the horizon is about 85 miles away. Another object at 6000 ft (i.e., if reallybelow the clouds near Montgomery, Al., as C-W thought) would be below the curve of thehorizon - unless it was closer than about 180 miles. The Alabama-Georgia border area is ~500mi away, and a fireball tracking anywhere near the zenith there would have to be in the orderof 100,000ft up to even peek over the horizon for our pilots near Blockstone-Greenboro. Theysaw it some degrees up over their western horizon, an estimated 20 degs - probably an

exaggeration, but that fireball could have been maybe 40 miles up over the Alabama-Georgiaborder area and so tens of miles away from C/W, travelling at tens of thousands of MPH. The

angular rate then would be proportional to an object a tenth of a mile away travelling hundredsof MPH, and this could be what C/W saw going by as it broke into fragments high over SAlabama.

Personally I think we need very strong reasons not to regard these sightings as confirming ahigh altitude fireball far to the west, on a heading that would fit the C/W sighting. The only realstrong argument is the reported time discrepancy, and I'm not sure that this is strong enoughfor reasons already discussed.

TIMING

But if they are all one and the same fireball the scatter of times must be due to error. Is thispossible? It does happen. For example, I recall the wide scatter of times in reports of theMarch 1993 Cosmos re-entry over the UK (the so-called "RAF Cosford incident"): there was acluster of times around the re-entry time of about 0100, but related outliers occurred from

0015 to 0200.

As chance would have it, while we were discussing this Joel Carpenter posted(currentencounters list post 15.02.11) hot news of a fireball seen all over the NE states of theUS, see:

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball2/public.php?start_date=2011-01-01&end_date=2011-12-31

Joel points out that according to the comments most witnesses thought (mistakenly) that it fellnearby. Also, Look at the spread of times reported for the same event - from 12:10 EST to13:00 EST, with outliers from 11:45 to 13:15. And this is when everyone is plugged in tomobile phones, laptops, GPS, digital watches, 24-hr TV, radio and internet.

In the 1948 case the Covington hunters' memory of "about 0300" is probably not difficult todeal with, given the admitted uncertainty and likely circumstances. (This parallels vague

reports in the 1993 Cosford case made by a couple of eel fishermen and a scout troop campingin the hills, where the times recorded were very wide of the true time at 2100 and 0200respectively. These are a] situations where people are not attentive to the time in the firstplace and b] where reliable primary sources might be lacking and where misleading times maybe associated with them in secondary sources.)

Massey at Robins AFB said it "came out of the north" and "headed southwest". This couldeasily put it on the trajectory reciprocal to C/W BUT this depends on a 1-hour confusion (i.e.with time zones as SIGN speculated, but discounted). The time given is 0140-0150 EST inMacon Georgia. The plane from Houston was apparently reporting time as 0245, also EST. Butit has to be admitted that the file is a bit confused. One SIGN doc has 0345 on the Chiles-
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Whitted report and another has a hand-correction from 0245 to 0340.

The Blackstone-Greenboro air sightings were reported as 0230 EST and appear to be a fireball

- SIGN treat them as such and thus irrelevant to the "unexplained" Montgomery case. But thedirection of travel (SW) is the same as the Robins AFB sighting and the Montgomery sighting.

The object seen by the hunters near Covington, Ga, was also probably a brilliant meteor, only afew seconds, and again in the right direction (W rather than SW, but reconcileable).

The Robins AFB report by Massey the civilian watchman is problematical. Because of thesimilarity of description and the exact one-hour discrepancy, SIGN initially suspected a time-

zone error, suggesting that the airline reporting times would not be EST, but they appear tohave dropped that idea. I don't know how to resolve this in favour of the fireball theory, but ithas to be uncomfortable for the UFO theory that the suspicion exists. Perhaps Massey or theinterviewer made an erroneous 'correction' at source?

Massey's description is very similar to C/W's. He was asked if he was aware of C/W's storybefore reporting. A comment in Sneider's evaluation comments that there was no chance ofcross-influence between Massey and C/W. At the time of original reporting this may be true.But we have little information about what he reported then (see below). By the time of his

interview Massey answered a question if he was aware of the C/W sighting, replying that hewas, having read it the papers. So perhaps the possibility of influence by the time of hisdetailed report describing "windows" etc cannot be ruled out.

The three aircrew reports, two in Virginia and one in Alabama, are more interesting: two at0230 and one at 0245. If the two eastern reports are independent of one another, one wouldsay that 0230 gets the majority vote, so might there be an explanation of why the other timewas reported as 0245? Speculation, of course, but there might be, if C/W had a reason fordelaying the time of their report.

When C/W reported this apparent air-miss by radio they asked about military traffic conflictsetc in the area. But they didn't do this immediately. They apparently first talled to the

passenger witness, McKelvie. His own report commented that the crew seemed excited andnervous about what had happened. Perhaps they discussed it because they were unsure about

whether to report a UFO or not. When they decided to, it may have occurred to them not toemphasise the fact that they had delayed in making this report of a potential collision hazard

in the civil air lanes. Consequently they may have reported it as occurring closer to the time oftheir radio report, or allowed this to be assumed. Thus 0245 gets recorded as the event time

instead of somew time nearer to 0230.

As I said, pure speculation, but we can take this a bit further:

Brad Sparks points out (currentencounters list post 14.02.11) that they had an ETA of 0253 atMontgomery, Al., ~20-25 mi NE of their reported position at the sighting time. (I didn't realise

until now that they landed at Mongomery, I thought they flew on to Atlanta. Well, in fact theywere apparently scheduled to go to Atlanta via Columbus, too, but skipped Columbus because

of fog.) So the sighting window, during level cruise and therefore prior to starting descent from5000ft @ 500ft/min ~10 mins out, would be before ~0243.

Then consider that Chiles said: "After it passed we must have sat there for five minuteswithout saying a word we were so speechless"


Does this hiatus suggest they were not immediately thinking about starting their descent toMontgomery at the time? If it does (and I think so) then it would tend to push the time backwell before 0243, possibly to about 0238, helping to repair discrepancy with the Blackstone-area pilots' fireball "about 0230".


9/12

This might be consistent with my speculative suggestion that C/W allowed it to be assumedthat the sighting happened immediately before the radio reporting time, at about 0245, whenin fact there had been an understandable delay in deciding to report.

I had thought that C/W also talked to McKelvie immediately after the sighting and before

reporting. But couldn't afterwards find the source that gave me that impression. They did talktogether, see


but when they first did so isn't stated (but see below).

In McKelvie's statement


he noted that C/W "seemed quite excited and they seemed nervous over the episode", whichcould suggest an excited reaction noticed immediately after the sighting, but not necessarily.

[Note also McKelvie stated the landscape below was clearly visible in the bright moonlight,hence why he was looking out of the window, emphasising the scattered nature of the clouds.]

Re the possible time zone issue: According to this UPI report, 24 July 1948, Chiles gave thesighting time as "0245 CST", not EST.


Another confusing point to note: I mentioned an unexplained handwritten correction on one of

the SIGN summaries from 0245 to "0340". Note also that in this OSI interview Chiles himselfreports that the time was 0340 (twice repeated by the interviewing agent)


FURTHER NOTE RE THE QUESTION OF C-W's SIGHTING TIME V. REPORT TIME.

I just re-read Whitted's and Chiles' accounts of actions after sighting, and they show room forlots of delay before reporting, supporting our inference that the sighting occurred well before

descent and thus probably much earlier than the 0245 recorded. Here's the end of hisstatement:

I asked Capt Chiles what we had just seen and he said that he didn't know. Capt Chiles

then contacted the company radio operator at Columbus, Ga., and asked him to contactLawson Fld at Ft Benning, Ga., and find out of the Army had any jet or experimentalplanes in the vicinity. The company operator called us back a few minutes later and

stated that Lawson Field reported that they had no planes in our area. Capt Chiles thenreported back to the company radio operator saying that a strange aircraft had just

passed us and it looked like some type of rocket ship. We passed up Columbus becauseof ground fog and continued on to Atlanta.

Now here's the end of Chiles' statement:

After it passed it pulled up into some light broken clouds and was lost from view. There

was no prop wash or rough air felt as it passed. After talking to the only passengerawake at the time, he saw only the trail of fire as it passed and pulled into the clouds

[emphasis added - this appears to be the source of my impression that McKelvie talkedto the crew immediately after]. I called the company at Columbus...
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10/12

So, they sat in shocked silence as Chiles said for "5 minutes" before saying anything(hyperbole of course, but indicative)

Then they talked together about what they'd seen.

They probably also talked to McKelvie, who was 5 or 6 seats back on the right side (just aboutlevel with the back of the wing root) who noted in his report that they were "excited" and"seemed nervous" about it.

Then Chiles called the company operator with a query about Army activities.

Then the operator called Ft Benning and talked to the Army.

"A few minutes later" the operator called Chiles back and explained that the Army had nothingin the area.

ONLY THEN did Chiles report to the operator that "a strange aircraft just passed us".

FURTHER NOTE ON MASSEY (ROBINS AFB) SIGHTING TIME

When talking to the investigator Massey appears quite certain of the time, 0140-0150 EST,because he had to write down the take-off time of the DC-3 he was guarding at that moment.That would mean any "error" had to be with C/W, and some speculation about whether airlinesfly on Daylight Saving Time appears in the file. But C/W plainly give their time as EST and it'shard to imagine how they could be wrong. So this seems to be a dead end.

On the other hand I found this


a message from Maxwell Flight Service Centre to HQ MATS, forwarded to ATIC for information

on 4 Aug 1948. The original date and time are not shown, but this could be the very earliestrecord of the Massey sighting, describing it as reported by the Robins AFB dispatcher to MFSC

on the morning of the sighting:

"The following report received from the Maxwell flight ServiceCenter, Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama is quoted foryour information:

"On 24 July 1948, the aircraft dispatcher on duty at WarnerRobins AF Base notified the Maxwell Flight Service Center that aflourescent squash-shaped object with a flaming exhaust had been

sighted at 0250E. This object was sighted by Mr. --------, amember of the civilian alert crew, who stated that the object

appeared to be wingless and was headed south at terrific speed.Mr ------- estimated the object to be about twenty-five feet inlength.

"At 0315E Eastern Airlines Houston-to-Atlanta flight reportedsimilar object in vicinity of Lawson AF Base, and was forced toalter course to avoid collision.

"No further information available this Center."

NOTE: "sighted at 0250E" which would make Massey's sighting essentially simultaneous with
http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=NARA-PBB2-1393http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=NARA-PBB2-1393http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=NARA-PBB2-1393http://www.bluebookarchive.org/page.aspx?PageCode=NARA-PBB2-1393


11/12

the C/W sighting and seal the deal for the fireball... .

(BUT... the same message places the C/W sighting at 0315E, so this confuses things - at leastI suppose this is the C/W sighting, but as well as having a different time the location is wrong,too. As far as I can make out Lawson AFB must be Lawson Army Airfield, south of Columbus,Ga., which is about 100 mi away from where C/W were flying!)

PROBLEMS WITH FIREBALL THEORY

The theory isn't perfect. There are problems. They have different weights and none of them issimple to interpret.

First the "rocket" drawings, both men show a clear outline shape and a broad similarity in thetwo tiers of rectangular openings or windows. Again there is a lot of subjectivity in the

judgment but for my money I don't find them a problem for the fireball theory, given amplehistorical precedent for very similar illusions due to fragmenting fireballs in far less difficultcircumstances than this. There is opportunity too for unconscious confabulation during

discussion after the event when impressions such as the "windows" could have been firmed up

in both men's minds.

On the other hand if Massey at Robins AFB saw the same fragmented fireball as C/W, and if thefragments were the "windows", why did Massey notsee any "windows", just the smooth "belly"

of a cylinder with a "phosphorescent glow" along it? This fact is not inconsistent with a ventralview from the ground of the same object seen in lateral view from the air by C/W (but Massey

knew of C/W's descriptions at this time and some influence can't be excluded).

If the one-hour Mongomery-Robins time difference could be nailed down it could be strong

support for an unknown. But the nagging suspicion of a time error doesn't go away - note theMFSC message quoting the Robins dispatcher's early report of a time of 0250E for Massey's

sighting.

The pull-up seen by C/W remains dubious IMO. The issue of how "sharp" they actually thought

it was at the time remains unresolved. The record of their words is ambiguous, and anyway it'shard to define how you would measure such an impression in a way which is a very convincing

separator between a true high-G manoeuvre on the part of the object and an impression ofsuch in confusing circumstances. So it's not simple.

The number of other sighting reports is arguably very low for a brilliant fireball train, evengiven the time of night and relative lack of publicity outlets in 1948. If it was seen as "an

unusually brilliant meteor" by pilots 5-600 miles away one feels it ought to have been seen bymore people over such a wide area. Of course, we can't prove that it wasn't.

Finally there is the matter of the cloud base.

If C/W saw a fragmenting fireball streaking by above and to their right it was many miles highand certainly tens of miles slant range (elevation above horizon depends on whose figures youuse: Whitted thought it was 1/2 mile away and 500ft above their own 5000ft; Chiles thought itwas as close as 700ft away, and not much if at all higher because he thought it was below theclouds - these imply about 11 deg and 35 deg respectively). It has to have been seen between

and/or through the clouds, which were reported as broken, 4/10 at 6000ft. This obviouslyimplies 6/10 of the sky clear. The question is "Which 6/10"?

I don't know exactly where the weather obs come from - possibly Maxwell AFB? This would be

close on the West side of the town of Montgomery, about 40-45 deg and 20 miles from thesighting location which was about 20 miles SW of Montgomery, the sighting direction movingthrough an arc from NE to SE. The cloud in this area and in these directions is not necessarily

guaranteed by the local weather obs. This pencil of bearings limiting the C/W sighting contains


12/12

all of the locations of the other fireball-type sightings that night (see map) and at all of theselocations the weather was given as clear, bright moonlight, no clouds. The SIGN file notes thatweather obs confirmed in all cases the condition reported by the observers. From the DC-3itself, C/W reported "clear, bright mooonlight" and only "some light broken clouds" whilstMcKelvie, in the back, was watching the landscape which was clearly visible to the right of theplane (E/SE) illuminated by bright moonlight, suggesting the possibility of plenty of clear sky inthe appropriate direction.

And complete cloudlessness may not be necessary - they said the light from the thing was verybrilliant, comparable to burning magnesium, which would be dazzlingly bright and mighttransmit through some thin broken clouds as well as between them. The brilliance of theburning sources ("windows") might have been bright enough to blind the eye to any fainterlight diffused by intervening thin cloud except that which they saw as the "blue glow" - or I

suppose a cloud-diffused halo of light around the fragments could have helped give rise to theimpression of a cylindrical "body" containing the "windows".

Martin Shough, Feb.2011